A.C. Gonzalez, the interim Dallas city manager, stubbornly tried to crack down on the car service Uber without City Council input and over objections from his predecessor, the police chief and others, according to an investigative report released Wednesday.

Gonzalez now admits that his actions constituted “one of the worst decisions of his career,” the report said.

The inquiry, ordered by Mayor Mike Rawlings, found no evidence of illegal or unethical conduct by Gonzalez or anyone else.

Still, Rawlings called the conduct of Gonzalez, the top internal candidate to replace retired City Manager Mary Suhm, “highly disappointing.”

Sam Merten, the mayor’s spokesman, said no disciplinary action will be taken against Gonzalez. “But this incident will be evaluated as part of his overall job performance when he’s considered for the full-time job,” Merten said.

Gonzalez, who apologized to City Council members this week, said in an interview Wednesday that he still plans to pursue the city manager job.

“I certainly … made a mistake on the approach on this one,” he said. “I’d like folks to also recognize that I’ve had other, much different days and have worked to accomplish, along with the council and community, many other things that are quite substantial and are making a very positive impact on the community.”

Founded in 2009 by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Uber has emerged in cities across the country as a high-tech competitor to traditional taxi companies. At the heart, Uber’s service is a mobile app that enables passengers to connect with drivers of vehicles for hire.

Cab companies across the country argue that that Uber and similar smartphone services are unlicensed transportation companies, which don’t pay the same fees and aren’t subject to the same regulations as licensed taxi companies. Uber, on the other hand, contends that it’s merely a technology service, one that puts customers together with drivers who already have city-issued licenses.

The Dallas Morning News previously reported that top city staffers, including Gonzalez, worked in concert with Yellow Cab Co. in the run-up to undercover police stings earlier this year that targeted Uber drivers. Yellow Cab’s attorney, John Barr, helped draft a proposed new limousine ordinance that, according to Uber officials, would have killed their business.

Rawlings ordered an investigation after the proposed ordinance was placed on the council’s Aug. 28 consent agenda — meaning it was scheduled to be voted on without any discussion or debate. That caused an uproar among Uber supporters and some council members.

The mayor’s investigation, which was headed by former Dallas County District Attorney Bill Hill, offered new details about events since summer 2012, when Uber began operating in Dallas.

Within months of Uber’s arrival, Barr “initiated efforts to communicate Uber activities to city staff,” the report said. City attorneys, agreeing with Barr, concluded that Uber was operating as an illegal transportation company. When city officials tried to communicate with Uber, company representatives were uncooperative, the report said.

Barr hired a private investigator, a former FBI agent, to ride in limousines ordered through Uber and collect information. City management then had Police Chief David Brown dispatch vice officers, who mirrored that work.

Though Brown followed the orders to send vice officers after Uber, he told Gonzalez — then the first assistant city manager — that he did not believe it was an effective way of dealing with the issue, the report said.

Dallas police and code compliance officers issued about 60 citations to Uber drivers. City prosecutors have since dropped all of the cases.

Assistant City Manager Joey Zapata “took full responsibility for the decision to use Dallas police officers,” according to the report. Zapata said he consulted with Suhm, who was still city manager, “and she consented to the enforcement actions.”

Suhm resigned effective July 1, and Gonzalez became interim city manager. But Suhm remains in her office at City Hall, where she is working on “special projects” through the end of the year.

Gonzalez apparently saw the Uber case as a way to show that he was in charge.

According to the report, Gonzalez acknowledged that Suhm strongly disagreed with his approach and encouraged him to take the matter to a council committee first.

“Gonzalez felt that this was an opportunity to demonstrate his aggressiveness and ordered the agenda move forward,” the report said. “Gonzalez readily admitted that he underestimated the public response to the proposed ordinance change. … He took full responsibility for his decisions, admitting that it was one of the worst decisions of his career.”

According to the investigative report, Gonzalez acknowledged that he was “overwhelmed” by his new responsibilities, among them finalizing the city budget for fiscal 2013-14.

By asking city attorneys to use Barr’s draft as a guide in writing the proposed new ordinance, Gonzalez helped create “the after-the-fact perception” that Yellow Cab had “too much influence within City Hall,” Rawlings said in his executive summary of the report.

A majority of the current council members, including the mayor, have received campaign contributions from Yellow Cab’s president, Jack Bewley, and his family.

Rawlings said it remains unclear to him whether city attorneys believed current ordinances were sufficient to regulate Uber or whether new ordinances were needed.

“This ambivalence from the city attorney’s office was at the crux of this problem,” he said.

City Council member Philip Kingston said the report “did confirm my assumption that the Uber debacle was not the result of discrete instances of poor judgment. It resulted from a culture in the manager’s office of removing policymaking authority from the council. … The report also reconfirmed the undue influence of special interests at City Hall.”

The silver lining, Kingston said, is that “my colleagues have committed to examining the way in which city issues are brought to council’s attention.”

Rawlings pledged that will be the case. He said he wrongly assumed that the Uber matter would go to the council’s Transportation Committee before it came before the full council. As a result, he said, “I didn’t push for a briefing in this case.

— While there was no illegal or unethical behavior, “several wrong decisions and bad judgments were made.”

— Interim City Manager A.C. Gonzalez’s actions were “highly disappointing to me and I have told him such.”

— The city staff failed to grasp that the emergence of Uber, a digital company that connects passengers with vehicles for hire, reflects a changing market whose policy dynamics are “extremely complicated” and whose legal underpinnings are “at best unclear.”

— City staffers “never stopped and asked for buy-in or advice” from the City Council, even though they were dealing with “an industry that is undergoing a major transformation.”

— A “small group of city individuals believed they alone could solve this problem. That judgment was naïve.”

— Shortly after he became interim city manager, Gonzalez instructed city attorneys to draft proposed ordinances aimed at regulating Uber, ordinances that were “similar to the ones Yellow Cab’s attorney had drafted.” This created “the after-the-fact perception” that Yellow Cab had undue influence at City Hall.

— Gonzalez placed the proposed ordinances on the council’s Aug. 28 agenda “over the objections of other city staff members,” without taking the matter first to a council committee, and “without any public or private briefings.” This was “a bad decision” and “an overreach” by the interim city manager.

— Dallas Police Chief David Brown told Gonzalez that using vice squad officers to cite Uber drivers “would not be the most effective way” of dealing with the matter, but the vice squad was deployed anyway.

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